How to Measure SEO Campaign Performance?

This is one of the most asked questions by junior SEOs and even many clients. SEO is a field which is constantly changing because of the evolving nature of search engines like Google. Before 2012 Google Penguin update the key performance indicator was keyword ranking only. People use to compare their site ranking with competitors while discussing progress with their SEO service provider or employee. Things have changed a lot after 2012 Google update and till now Google has evolved in to a sematic search engine which is capable of understand user intent.

Are Keywords Still Important?

Yes keywords are still important because the whole concept of SEO is linked with keyword ranking improvement in search results but this is not time bound now. No one can be sure about when a keyword will reach a first page of Google or in top 3 positions. Each keyword has its competition level and different other factors involving website page level factors. It all depends on the competition of keyword it can take few months with low competition to reach the first page of Google or it can take even a year to reach the first page of Google with high competition.

The key is to assess the actual competition of the keywords you or your agency is selecting. It is recommended to let your SEO agency or employee select keywords because they will definitely know the right time frame to optimize a keyword based on its competition if they follow the recommended practices.

Other Key Performance Indicators

SEO campaign performance cannot be assessed with target keyword rankings only. The other factors which can indicate SEO performance are mentioned below:

1. Organic Traffic of Target Pages

When the target pages are optimized with textual & media content which include target keywords then various other long tail keyword phrases are automatically targeted as well. Because there can be hundreds or even thousands of ontologies of different keyword phrases which automatically start ranking once the target pages gets optimized and indexed in Google SERPs.

You can check your organic traffic stats in Google Analytics account on monthly and weekly basis. I do not recommend daily basis because SEO takes at least few weeks to impact organic traffic.

2. Customer Response from the Website

If you have a business website then eventually you will start receiving customer queries from your website if SEO campaign starts working.

3. Referral Traffic

You can check this traffic source in Google Analytics, if the traffic is coming from the back links created by SEO team then it also indicates the progress level of SEO campaign. Most of the time many of the valuable users come from other sites, they find any article, video or other content which include your website URL.

Conclusion

In the end SEO is a complete puzzle and keyword ranking is one piece of puzzle, you cannot judge the whole campaign performance based on keyword ranking only. You need to understand the competition level of your keywords and if they are competitive then obviously they will take some time to rank on the first page of Google or any other search engine.

I work as a senior SEO expert in Lahore and I have worked on hundreds of SEO campaigns and constantly check what is changing in the SEO landscape. My recommendations above are based on the practical experience gained while working on actual SEO campaigns.

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